


this will be (an everlasting love)

by aomame (heart_nouveau)



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: 1990s, Christmas, F/F, Hanukkah, Holidays, Holtzmann's family, Mistaken Identity, New Year's Eve, POV Patty, Slow Build, They're Jewish!, While You Were Sleeping AU, Younger Holtzmann, holiday fic, holtzmann's backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9058051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heart_nouveau/pseuds/aomame
Summary: First, Patty falls for Jillian Holtzmann's brother. Then she falls for Jillian Holtzmann.-A While You Were Sleeping AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't seen _While You Were Sleeping_ (1995), I highly recommend doing so before or after reading this fic! It's currently available on US Netflix, and is an adorable rom-com that crawls under your skin and stays there. 
> 
> The basic gist of the movie is that Sandra Bullock, a charmingly awkward Chicago transit worker, saves a man's life after he gets pushed onto the subway tracks. He's a floppy-haired 90s hunk, but after she accidentally gets mistaken for his fiancée and starts to become part of his family, she finds herself falling for his floppy-haired, equally hunky brother. Here, Patty is the protagonist, and Holtzmann is-- well, I'll let you find out.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

 

If anyone had asked young Patty Tolan how she thought she’d be spending all her future Christmases, she would’ve given them a rosy picture. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, a big cozy restored Victorian in the suburbs, plenty of little kids running around at her feet, and matching Fair Isle sweaters for her and her very tall, handsome husband. (If asked at age 25, Patty would have said husband _or_ wife, but that wasn’t a revelation that arrived until she’d accumulated some age and wisdom.) Some good food and her daddy relaxing by the fire in a handcrafted chair, contentedly playing Christmas carols on his old record player for everyone to enjoy, would’ve put the final touch on this idyllic holiday vision.

Instead here she was, 33 years old in her MTA booth on a snowy but rather gloomy Christmas Day, having been sweet-talked _again_ into working holidays by her well-meaning but very emotionally astute and thus manipulative boss.

“But Patty, Inés already worked and—Look, everyone wants to be with their families today. You’re the only one who doesn’t have any,” he’d said at last, giving up the ghost.

That stung, but it was the cold hard truth. Patty _didn’t_ have any family. And that was not something she had ever anticipated happening to her.

All hope was not lost. She was counting down the hours until her shift was over and she could go home, turn on the radio, pour some hot cocoa and roll out some gingerbread, and curl up with a good Agatha Christie and her cat, Major Barbara. And—let’s not forget— fantasize about the man who’d taken up a good amount of her daydreams for the past three months.

It got boring in the booth sometimes, so yes, Patty let her mind wander. She probably saw hundreds of people walking through her station each day. But when The Man—classically handsome, with cropped blonde hair and blue-gray eyes, and always so well dressed, which Patty appreciated in a person—started arriving during the morning rush, he quickly became the only one Patty had eyes for.

There was just something about him. People seemed to move aside when he passed—maybe because he was so tall and handsome—but probably because they could _tell_ he was important. And though he always seemed rushed and hurried, Patty thought his eyes were kind.

And no, Patty had _not_ already picked out the names for half of their kids ( _Rose would be so nice and classic, and there’s already a Rose in the Tolan family tree so the name would have some heritage. For our son, something traditional with religious roots like Matthew or Isaiah would be just right_ ).

Of course not. That would be silly.

Now Patty let her eyes wander to the clock and sighed. Christmas fell on a Saturday this year and subway foot traffic was atypically low. Luckily there were reduced hours for the holiday, but it was still barely past 9 a.m.

Up the stairs came a happy family, a perfect nuclear unit of two parents and two kids, and Patty watched them go with a wistful half-smile.

She glanced down at her book, and then glanced up. Her heart shivered.

It was _him_. The Man, standing in front of the booth, steely blue eyes looking right at her. “Patty, what’s a girl like you doing working on a day like today?” he asked, smiling. “Let’s go. Right now. Get out of that booth and I’ll show you what Christmas Day is supposed to be all about.”

Patty blinked.

The Man cleared his throat. “Excuse me, do you have the time?” he repeated politely.

“Oh.” Patty hastily checked her watch. She could feel her face growing warm with embarrassment. “It’s 9:10. The next train is in 7 minutes.”

“Thanks.” He moved a step away, and then turned back as if on an afterthought. “And, Merry Christmas.” He gave a small smile, which made nice little crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“Me—Mer—”

But he was already gone, halfway down the platform.

“Merry Christmas,” Patty said a full ten seconds too late. The words escaped her lips like a forgotten promise. Man, she was so disappointed in herself! Not that she was trying to be a hopeless romantic, but she’d bet that man would look real nice in a Fair Isle sweater. And so what if she’d been nursing a crush on him for the past few months, and would likely never get the chance to speak to him again?

Patty was so busy berating herself it took her a minute to notice some other people had joined The Man on the waiting platform.

There were three. They seemed to be arguing with The Man, and it didn’t look pretty. Patty narrowed her eyes and stood up. Then, with shock, she was proven right—one of the strangers reached out a gloved hand and pushed The Man backwards onto the tracks. There was an awful moment as he fell backwards, arms windmilling into empty air. Then he was gone from sight.

 “No!”

Patty was out of the booth before she remembered taking a step, adrenaline pumping.

“We’re gonna find you little creeps,” she yelled at the muggers, who sprinted past her and jumped the turnstiles. Normally she would bolt after them, but she had only one thought: the subway train that was now only five minutes from the station.

She thumped down the steps to the tracks and knelt next to him. He’d fallen right into the middle of the tracks. Luckily his back hadn’t hit any of the metal, but his tall body looked as clumsy as a doll’s, and Patty winced just to see him. _Damn, that must’ve hurt._

“Earth to Mr. Handsome,” she said nervously, reaching out to grasp his lapels. “Hello? Anybody in there?” She leaned in, getting a whiff of classic cologne, maybe Ralph Lauren? “Oh my god, you smell amazing.” _Not the time, Patty_.

She looked around for help, but the platform was deserted. She could feel her panic rising. She looked back at the man in front of her.

“We awake?” she asked hopefully.

He really wasn’t. There was a nasty gash on his forehead, and his long-lashed eyes showed no sign of opening. Patty gritted her teeth at the thought of anyone being so cruel as to do this to another person, even if that person was a stranger.

She checked her watch. _T-minus three minutes._ She shook him by the lapels. “Okay come on man, we gotta go.”

Using every ounce of her strength, Patty hoisted the man up, slung him over her shoulder, and bodily carried him off the tracks. Her body was screaming in resistance to his weight and her brain was full of panic, but she kept putting one work-booted foot in front of the other and finally made it to the steps at the edge of the tracks.

A woman had appeared on the subway platform. When she saw Patty and her anonymous armful of man emerging from the tracks, her face was transformed with shock. She rushed over. “Oh my god! Is he—”

Patty carefully maneuvered The Man into a sitting position, supporting his neck like you would do for a baby. His head flopped onto his chest dangerously.

Just then, the subway train thundered onto the tracks and decelerated to a halt. The spot where The Man had been lying disappeared, covered by the train’s gleaming metal body. Patty’s eyes went wide and she swallowed hard.

She glanced at the woman and did her best to speak calmly. 

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to call 911.”

 

 

Patty rushed into the emergency room doors, frantic. Turning her head, she spotted the intake desk and hurried over. “Excuse me— I— I need to see the man who just got admitted. He’s been in an accident and—”

The nurse behind the desk raised her hands calmingly. “Do you know his name?”

“No, I—”

“Well I’m sorry, I can’t do anything without knowing his—”

Patty’s eye was caught by movement behind two glass-paned automatic doors to the right of the desk. There he was, strapped comatose to a moving stretcher being wheeled by several orderlies. Even through the glass he looked awful. “There! That’s him, right there.” She moved towards the doors but a sour-faced white man in a white coat peeled away from the stretcher to block her way.

“Whoa! Family only beyond this point. Are you family?” he demanded.

“No, but I saved—”

“Well no offense, but you can save _it_. Family only.”

The doors closed in Patty’s face, and it was like a bubble bursting. She watched The Man be wheeled down the sterile white hallway and out of sight.

“And to think, I was supposed to marry him,” Patty said quietly to herself. She shook her head. “‘Marry’ him.” Looked like her Christmas fantasy spouse this year was going to be just another anonymous face in a crowd.

A plump, dark-haired nurse approached. “Excuse me, but you were asking about the gentleman who just got admitted?” she said. Her face was kind, and she had a hint of an accent.

“Yeah, but…” Patty exhaled, scuffing one work shoe behind the other. “They say I can’t go in, so. I guess—”

The nurse put a hand firmly on Patty’s upper back. “Wait here.”

She returned about half an hour later, motioning to Patty with a secretive look on her face. Up they went to another floor of the hospital, to the door of a glass-paned room where Patty’s stranger lay on a white bed surrounded by a slew of weird-looking machines.

The nurse led her in. Patty tried to walk quietly, suddenly feeling awkward as hell. She hadn’t really thought forward to this part, where she’d be alone with the object of her daydreams in a non-life-threatening situation.

“Go on,” the nurse said with a smile, pointing to the chair by the bedside. “Let him hear your voice.” Then she left, closing the door behind her.

Patty awkwardly settled herself into the chair, gazing down at The Man. _I saved your life_ , she thought. It was surreal. Here she was, bonded to this stranger forever, sitting next to him, and she still knew just as little about him as she ever had.

Something glinted in the dim hospital light, and Patty leaned closer, curious. Under his blue hospital gown The Man wore a small gold Star of David, suspended on a gold chain.

“Oh, you Jewish, huh? Guess you only wished me Merry Christmas to be polite.”

She sat back. Her eye was caught by the EKG monitor on the opposite side of the bed, its neon green spikes tracing themselves over and over again. Then she noticed a strip of white circling The Man’s wrist—his paper intake bracelet. “Oh my god!” Despite the crazy circumstances her heart leapt, because this felt like gathering pieces of a puzzle. She moved closer, getting halfway out of her seat. **HOLTZMANN, GABRIEL** , said the tiny block letters.

“Gabriel. Well, that’s a nice name.”

Patty leaned back into her chair, contemplative. She fought not to imagine the monogram she would order for his sweaters if they were married (she didn’t even know his middle name! Plus it was high time to stop being so creepy about a man she’d never properly met!). And then, because the urge to escape into fantasy was far less compelling once she was actually sitting next to the object of those fantasies, Patty suddenly had to fight to keep some other, darker feelings at bay. Though she didn’t mind hospitals, the last time she’d been in one was when her daddy—well, there was no need for those thoughts now.

She reached out and patted Gabriel’s hand. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Gabriel. Bet you’re glad you went to Patty’s station, huh? Not every MTA worker could pull a man off the tracks, because no offense, you ain’t exactly a featherweight… but that’s okay, I’m not either. I’m gonna miss you at the station, ‘cause I kinda liked watching you catch the train every morning. That’s embarrassing, but it’s true.”

Patty took a breath. “Anyway, everything’s gonna be fine. I know it might not seem like it now, since you’re in a coma. But maybe once this is all over, and you wake up all fine and dandy, you can buy me dinner or something. Seems fair, seein’ as I saved your life.” She smiled, then pushed back her chair and stood up. “Until then, Gabriel.”

Patty had only taken only a few steps towards the door when she was practically blown back into the room by an entering explosion of energy and noise. This translated itself into an amorphous gaggle of people, nearly ten total: a middle-aged couple, one very old grandmother, and a handful of pre-teens and teenagers.

“Oh my god, Gabriel! _Look_ at him!” “What on earth’s happened to him?” “ _Oy vey_ … he looks terrible, just terrible…” “Gabe! Gabe! Can you hear me?” “He’s really in a coma? It just looks like he’s sleeping, don’t you think—?”

They appeared to have been led by the same nurse who had brought Patty. Now sidling through the door in the crowded room was an older man in a white coat and badge that said “Dr. Ramamurthy.”

“Everyone, please – I’m Mr. Holtzmann’s doctor,” he said, raising his voice over the din. “Mr. Holtzmann’s vitals are constant, and he’s exhibiting normal brain activity – I think there’s a strong chance of recovery. He does appear to have a concussion, but if we keep him stable until the swelling goes down, then the risk of permanent damage is very low.”

“But what _happened_ to him?” repeated the middle-aged woman tearfully.

Patty cleared her throat from the corner of the room. “Uh, he was pushed onto the train tracks, and got knocked out.”

Everyone turned to Patty in surprise.

“Sorry, who are you?” asked the man who by process of elimination seemed to be Gabriel’s father. He had an almost comical look of shock. Patty was about to answer when—

“Well, she’s his fiancé!” said the nurse.

Everyone’s mouth opened into circles of surprise.

Patty felt her face grow warm with embarrassment. “Wait—Now that—”

“ _And_ she saved his life,” the nurse added proudly. “She’s the one who pulled him off the tracks.”

“Oh my GOD!” Tears welled up in the female family member’s eyes and she rushed forward to clasp Patty in her arms. She hugged so tightly that Patty, who was not given to overt shows of emotion, suddenly felt a wave of something rising in her chest and pricking at her own eyes.

It was so strange, but she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given her a hug.

The woman pulled back, clasping Patty by the shoulders. “You saved Gabriel’s life _and_ you’re engaged to him—and he hasn’t even mentioned you! Oh, I’m just going to kill him when he wakes up! I mean—that came out wrong, but—how could he keep something like this from his own _mother_?”

“I don’t—" 

“I’m Jessica,” said the woman firmly. “Gabriel’s mother. Come on.”

 

  
 

Patty spent a few very interesting hours in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by a ring of beaming faces. Gabriel’s entire family seemed to be intent on learning everything they could about her.

“I’m just so happy that Gabriel found you,” Jessica was saying. She had a pleasant, warm face, and a slightly 1950s vibe in the way she dressed and carried herself, which put Patty in mind of a bubbly sitcom wife. “Now if he called his mother a little more, maybe we could’ve have been able to meet you _before_ , under better circumstances. But oh, I just can’t believe it. You saved him. I guess Gabriel really _does_ know how to pick them, after all.” She beamed and clasped Patty’s hand.

“Believe me, we were getting a little worried,” Gabriel’s father put in, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. His name was Isaac; Patty had caught that, but still couldn’t remember anyone else’s.

Two of the oldest kids rolled their eyes and groaned loudly. Patty’s stomach twisted uncomfortably.

“Shiksa,” Gabriel’s grandmother supplied. She had an adorable wrinkled face like a little dumpling, and pale white hair that she kept under a scarf.

“She means ‘not Jewish’,” translated Gabriel’s father, grinning at Patty like it was an inside joke just between the two of them.

The oldest girl leaned over, lowering her voice confidentially. “Not just that. Gabe’s girlfriends were usually _awful_. Like the most spoiled, richest, prissy mean girls. He always had to find the worst one and date her.”

“Yes, so that’s why we’re so happy to find out that he’s going to settle down with a _nice_ girl. I don’t suppose you’re Jewish?” Jessica said hopefully.

Patty laughed. “No. I may be wrong, but I don’t think there are many black people in that faith.”

“Never mind that,” said Isaac, giving her a nod and a wink.

“Well, actually we do have some blacks in our congregation,” Jessica said brightly. Patty winced internally, but let it go. “And they’re lovely, just lovely. Like you. I—I already know.”

Despite the woman’s awkwardly worded sentiment, Patty liked her. She couldn’t help it. She liked all of them. These were good people, a real _family_ —something she hadn’t experienced since moving to New York.

The whole family was remarkably wholesome looking. Assuming that they all, like Gabriel, were Jewish, Patty noticed that no one was wearing a yarmulke, and so hazarded a guess that they weren’t any kind of Orthodox Jews. She still hadn’t managed to get a headcount on the kids: there were between three and four, and the oldest looked about 17. All had on neatly pressed clothes, which Patty found impressive for kids of any age, but especially kids who had been rushed to the hospital under emergency circumstances. (Not to brag, but she did a lot of people watching from her MTA booth, and could give you the rundown on any New Yorker based on a few glances alone.)

All of this was to say that this wasn’t the worst family to spend a few hours socializing with in a hospital waiting room after she’d pulled their unconscious son off the train tracks.

But after several hours there was no news, except to hear that Gabriel had stabilized. Eventually it got too late to stay at the hospital, so Patty excused herself, said goodbye to the Holtzmann family, and went home. 

* * *

 

Very early the next morning, Patty stepped carefully into Gabriel’s hospital room.

She’d come at this inconvenient time to avoid running into the Holtzmanns, because she didn’t want things to become any more awkward than necessary. She had spent all of Christmas evening wishing she had someone to call, but resolved to fix the mess in which she’d inadvertently found herself.

“Hi, Gabriel,” she said softly. “It’s me again. I just came to say that yesterday I only wanted to see how you were doing, but there was a little bit of a misunderstanding. So, well… Now your family thinks we’re engaged.”

She smiled awkwardly and cleared her throat. “I’ve never been engaged to anyone before. So, this is pretty new to me.”

It felt really odd to be speaking to a comatose person. She didn’t know if Gabriel could hear anything she was saying, but superstitiously didn’t want to risk saying something rude or careless.

“Anyway, I promise I’m gonna clear this up today. I just wanted to come and explain things to you. And say I’m sorry.” That seemed to do it, so she took a seat by Gabriel’s bed for a moment relax for a moment before heading back out.

It was warm inside the hospital room, and very dim. Only the lights of the monitors illuminated the darkness. Patty yawned. It was so much warmer in here than outside.

… Patty’s head jerked up, and she realized she’d been sleeping, head nodding off onto her chest. She glanced up at the clock. It was 9 a.m., far later than she’d intended to stay.

“Oh, shit!” She hastily stood up, wiping the sleep from her eyes, and hurried out the door.

Just as she stepped into the hallway, the elevator door opened and the Holtzmann family poured out en masse. Patty almost turned to duck around the nearest corner or nursing cart, but of course they’d already seen her and called out in a chorus of welcoming voices.

“Patty, so good to see you!” Isaac’s voice was the loudest, and he sounded completely sincere. He strode towards her. “Visiting our boy, were you?”

“Oh, I just wanted to keep him updated on everything that’s going on,” Patty said, smiling broadly as she pulled words out of thin air and hoped they sounded like a coherent excuse.

“Excellent.” Jessica poked Isaac in the side and cleared her throat meaningfully. Seeming to catch the hint, he gently pulled Patty off to one side.  

“Listen, we’d like you to come to dinner tonight.” He clasped a hand on Patty’s shoulder. He had Gabriel’s crinkles, she realized suddenly: the crinkles that Gabriel got at the corner of his eyes when he’d smiled at her—Isaac had them too. “We missed the eighth night of Hanukkah because Gabriel was been in the hospital. But we’re celebrating tonight and you should be there. Assuming you don’t have other plans?”

“No, I…” Patty was point-blank surprised, but Isaac’s face was so friendly and inviting, and evocative of another face that used to look at her that way, that she said, “No. No other plans.”

“Fantastic. Here’s our card.” Isaac rummaged in his wallet and produced a business card. “We run a family business, you see. But there’s our phone number—right there— just call for our home address before you come.”

Patty accepted the little card and awkwardly headed for the elevators.

 _Come on, come on, come on_ , she thought, willing one of the cars to come faster, because even though the Holtzmanns had gone into their son’s room she knew they could still see her through the glass.

“Excuse me, are you Gabriel Holtzmann’s wife?” a voice said at her elbow. Patty jumped and almost swore. It was a hospital orderly in red-and-white scrubs, holding out an office-issue cardboard box.

“I am _not_ his wife!” Patty said, maybe a little too loudly. The orderly raised his eyebrows.

“Okay, fiancée, sorry,” he said. “I’ve got his belongings for you.” He pushed the box into her arms. It was surprisingly light.

“You should really—” _Give them to his family_ , she was going to say, but the orderly scooted off immediately, and when Patty glanced over her shoulder at the room buzzing with family members, she imagined the fuss if she went in there with a box of his stuff and insisted that they take it instead of her. “No, _you_ should take them,” Jessica would say tearfully, and whether they said it or not everyone would be curious as to why Gabriel’s “fiancée” couldn’t take care of his things, and—

 _Damn it_.

The elevator doors slid open. Patty got in, holding the box in her arms.

She’d just go back early tomorrow morning and put the box in Gabriel’s room somewhere. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

 

* * *

 

And then, to top it all off:

Patty didn’t mean to go and get herself even more tangled in this mess, taking advantage of such a kind family of strangers. But by the time 5 pm rolled around it was dark and cold outside, Major Barbara refused to come cuddle on the couch, and Patty couldn’t focus on her book. She thought wistfully about Jessica’s hug and the cute little Jewish grandma and the gentle way Gabriel’s father spoke and how he winked at Patty like they already had a special bond.

Shaking her head at herself, she picked up the phone and dialed the Holtzmann family residence.

The family lived in a cozy brownstone that, if Patty were only a little pressured, she would admit looked strikingly similar to a city version of her dream home in the suburbs. Better yet, it was in a historic neighborhood of the city in a borough that she rarely had the chance to visit, which Patty was not embarrassed to admit she found extremely exciting.

She’d made sure to dress nicely, layering a wine-colored crushed velvet dress that reached the floor under a loose gray knit cardigan. Her hair was braided into its usual style, and she looped on a big strand of faux pearls and added some round gold earrings to accessorize.

“A sight for sore eyes!” said Gabriel’s father when he saw her, clapping his hands together and beaming. “Come, come.”

The house was beautifully decorated in an old-fashioned style that tugged every one of Patty’s heartstrings. Framed photographs on the wall featured generations of Holtzmanns all the way back to the Ukraine. “My father emigrated in the 1860s,” said Gabriel’s father proudly when he saw her looking. “Would you like to hear about it?”

Despite the groans of his kids, who had clearly been through this hundreds of times, Patty _did_ want to hear. She was treated to a fascinating talk about the history of the Ukraine, Jewish emigration to the various boroughs of New York City, and the particular mythologies of the Holtzmann family, which apparently included no fewer than three inventors, two artists (one prolific, one not), a very well-known poet, and a doctor who had made early advances in the field of bacteriology, only his research had been co-opted by more famous scientists who had no sense of generosity or academic integrity, “and so didn’t give credit where credit was due,” Isaac said disapprovingly, shaking his head. By this point he’d put on a small pair of round reading glasses with wire rims, which gave him the look of a scholar. “Here, I’ll show you a picture—” And he pulled out yet another scrapbook filled with black-and-white and sepia family photographs that Patty bet any archival collection would’ve been eager to acquire.

Eventually they were all called to dinner. The small but beautiful dining room was paneled in dark wood, and alive with light from candles placed along every sideboard. The table yawned with food, including many dishes Patty recognized and some she did not: brisket, noodle kugel, fried potato pancakes that smelled like heaven, dishes of applesauce, and more. She took her seat at the head of the table opposite Isaac, knowing that this signified she was the guest of honor.

In the middle of the table was a simple bronze menorah with nine candleholders that held unlit white candles. The youngest boy, Jonathan, took the middle candle and lit the candles from left to right, while he and his family sang in a language that sounded rich and ancient.

“ _Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam_ …" 

Patty took it all in. It was a blur of light and family and laughter and good food and tradition, and it was all more than she’d ever hoped to have for her holiday season.

 

 

Patty was fast asleep on the living room couch when she was awoken past midnight to the whisper of excited voices.

“ _Jillian_!” This was one of the older girls—Rachel or Sarah, Patty couldn’t quite place it.

“Hey, kiddo!” said another voice, new, female, and somewhat hoarse.

“We missed you at dinner, it was really fun, we—”

“I know, ‘m sorry. Had to take care of some things and the night bus was really late—”

“We saved you some presents though! And Grandma made challah with chocolate chips.”

A pause. “Hey, who’s that?” said the new voice with some interest, and Patty felt a cold sweat break out on her brow even though her back was turned to the hallway.

“That’s Patty. Jilly, you’ll love her, she’s so great!”

“Who?”

“Gabe’s fiancée.”

“ _What?_ Gabe’s getting married?”

“Yeah, didn’t Grandma tell you on the phone?”

“Well some of it got lost in translation, she kept slipping into Yiddish,” said the new voice.

“I’ll tell you all about it! Come on, let’s go to the kitchen, there’s leftovers,” said Rachel or Sarah, and the voices receded accompanied by the diminishing sounds of footsteps before both faded away.

The last thought Patty had before slipping back into sleep was, _Yeah, this doesn’t sound good._

 

* * *

 

Patty woke up to pale sunlight falling on her face through the bay window. She glanced at the wall clock and was only a little surprised to see that it was just past 6 a.m., since she often got up at this time for morning shifts. Still, it didn’t make her any less exhausted. She yawned, stretching out her arms—and stifled a gasp of shock when she saw that she wasn’t alone in the room.

A very small person or a bundle of clothes with a blonde wig on it lay curled up in the antique armchair across from Patty. It seemed like they’d pillowed their face on top of both arms on one side of the chair, and let both legs dangle off the opposite end in a position that hardly seemed comfortable or physically possible. The mass of clothes included a brown shearling-lined jacket, several layers of checked green, red, and white flannels, acid-wash jeans, and some very beat up Doc Martens. At the base of the chair, a heavily patched messenger bag had been abandoned with a few coils of wire spilling haphazardly out of one pocket.

Patty bit her lip. A hundred dollars said this was the missing sibling who’d returned last night, but the last thing she wanted was to get emotionally attached to another family member who would later disown her for being a liar by omission and an unintentional con artist. It seemed better to opt for a quick escape.

Hardly daring to breathe, she carefully slid on her coat, grabbed her purse, and got to her feet. The floorboards creaked a little as she tiptoed across them, but she was standing in the front hall and almost to the front door when—

“Well hey,” said a sleepy voice from behind her. “G’morning.”

Patty cursed internally. But her daddy hadn’t raised a disrespectful daughter, so she slid her purse strap over her shoulder and turned around slowly, a weak smile on her face.

She was surprised. The person who’d emerged from the chair was startlingly pretty, with electric blue eyes, pink lips, and an aureole of curly bleach-blonde hair accented with a few blue and purple streaks. She looked young, and the large amounts of dark eye makeup she wore only brought out her elfin beauty. There was also the fact that she looked undeniably like her brother Gabriel, in that they were both striking, and they both made Patty’s heart do weird things in her chest.

“Have we met?” said Gabriel’s sister. Leaning back into the shell-shaped back of her chair, she had swagger even when sitting down. It matched the jacket she had on, which was like something a 1940s fighter pilot would have worn. She tilted her head to one side. “Think I’d remember a pretty face like that.”

She winked. Patty couldn’t believe this was actually doing something to her.

“Don’t believe we have. I’m Patty.”

“Holtzmann,” said the girl grandly, pointing a thumb towards herself.

Patty had to chuckle. She tipped her head meaningfully at all the Holtzmanns staring out of black-and-white photographs all around them. “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Forgot the milieu. First name’s Jillian,” said the girl, somewhat grudgingly. She shrugged her jacket back onto her shoulders.

“Great. Well it’s nice to meet you, Jillian, but I’ve got to run, so—”

Jillian perked up. “ _You’re_ marrying my brother.”

Patty didn’t want to get into this. “Look, I’ve got…”

“I’m not really up to breakfast with the folks right now.” Jillian yawned, her jaws extending apart to an almost unbelievable degree for several seconds until she finally stopped. She cracked her neck. “Gotta work up to that. Let’s get coffee.”

Patty shook her head. “I can’t…”

“C’mon. Just for an hour,” wheedled Jillian.

It would take Patty at least 20 minutes to catch a train right now, so she relented. “Okay.”

Jillian led the way to a deli around the block. She was unexpectedly petite standing up, and barely reached past Patty’s elbow. Once they reached the deli counter, she rummaged noisily in her pockets. “Now where did my wallet…”

“It’s fine,” Patty said, and paid. It was too cold to sit by the windows, so they went over to a table in the back where they sat surrounded by shelves full of egg noodles and Manischewitz products.

Conversation was sparse at first. Jillian clearly wasn’t a morning person, and kept alternately dropping in and out of sleep like the dormouse from Alice in Wonderland, then becoming hyperalert and smiling and gazing at Patty with those disconcertingly blue eyes. Her gray eye shadow was smudged, but even that seemed charming and added to her unusual appeal.

“So I heard you pulled Gabriel off the tracks,” she began.

“That’s true, I did.”

Jillian nodded enthusiastically. “Pretty amazing.”

“I s’pose you could say that."

“Was it _hard_?”

Patty had just taken a sip of scalding hot coffee, and had to fan her mouth while she wondered if she’d misheard. “Excuse me?”

“Or was it easy?” Jillian sounded fascinated. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to do something like that. Did the superhuman adrenaline kick in?”

“You know, it’s really all kind of a blur,” Patty said honestly.

That didn’t seem to be enough for Jillian. “Sooooo is this like a one off? Or do you save people regularly?”

“Can’t say I’ve done anythin’ like that before.”

Jillian started at her, deadpan. Then she burst into a grin. “I don’t believe you.”

“Excuse me?” Patty repeated.

“I bet you do this all the time. You have that air about you.”

Patty laughed, shaking her head. “You got me all wrong, I don’t know what to say. Sorry.”

“So, if I went and walked into the street without looking both ways, would you pull me out of harm’s way?"

Patty stared at her. Jillian seemed slightly out of it, but there was a light, fun undercurrent to all this that showed that she wasn’t being serious. Or was she?

“Rhetorically speaking, of course. But don’t play with me like that.”

“’Course I wouldn’t _do_ it,” Jillian said. “That’s ridiculous.” She winked. The wink seemed to say, _No it’s not._

They fell into a slightly more comfortable silence after that, eating. Patty watched the planes of Jillian’s face, how she was kinetic, always fidgeting or somehow in motion. It was interesting, but then again, Patty was more than a little sleep-deprived. They were on their third refills of coffee when Jillian launched a charm offensive.

“So, what’s it like?”

Patty glanced up, engrossed in her bagel and really excellent cream cheese. “What’s what like?”

“Being so pretty.” Jillian winked, and sank her little face into one hand. ‘Making eyes at you’ would have been how Patty’s daddy would’ve described this situation, had he been there to see it.

Patty felt a few tingles zoom around her stomach, but promptly attributed them to caffeine jitters. “I’m sorry, I don’t feel right being flirted at by a college freshman who looks like she’s barely had her senior prom.”

Jillian smirked. “For Your Information, I’m 21. And you knew I was flirting. I’m so flattered.”

“Don’t insult me, baby. I got two eyes and a functioning brainstem. And you ain’t the only one who’s looked at this and liked what they’ve seen.”

Jillian eyes lit up and she laughed out loud, clapping her eyes together. Heads around them turned, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. “You! You are something else. A firecracker. No. You’re a Roman Candle. Have you _ever_ seen one of those?” She took a gulp of coffee and poured into a long soliloquy. “They’re these fantastic...”

Patty lowered her eyes and tried to finish her bagel. Charming and strange as this girl was, she was also Patty’s fake fiancé’s sister. If Patty got too involved, this was just going to be another complication.

Jillian was still going. “…Used to light them on the banks of the river upstate, only then we had to deal with lightning bugs, and you know how they…” She made violent jazz hands and some terrible sound effects that grew shriller in volume each time her hands raised and lowered.

The deli owner jerked his head around from where he sat behind the counter, looking alarmed. Patty caught his eye and gave him a look as if to say, _Don’t worry I got this,_ and also _I’m so sorry._

“Hey, uh, Jillian,” Patty said loudly, trying to quiet the other woman down. “Look, it’s almost seven and—I don’t want your family to wake up and worry about where you are. We should probably get goin’.”

Something in Jillian’s face changed. She slumped into her chair. “Well, fun’s over. Back to the family.”

 _Huh_. “They seem pretty nice to me,” Patty said, keeping her voice neutral.

“Yeah, to _you_ ,” Jillian said with surprising bitterness. “ _Look_ at you.”

Patty made a questioning face as if to say, go on?

“Nice, normal, steady job, pretty, _girly_. Let’s not forget a real, textbook-definition HERO. And, Gabe chose you.”

“Oh, I ain’t all that.”

Jillian looked so sullen that Patty was surprised, unable to think of what about the happy Holtzmann family could be so offensive. Perhaps there was more going on than met the eye, but… She thought again about the previous night, all of the holiday traditions the family had, how happy the younger siblings seemed, how successful Gabriel was… and how no one last night had mentioned Jillian once. How Jillian’s bizarre clothing choices contrasted with the neatly put-together rest of the family, and how eager Jillian had been to sneak out of the house early. It was odd, but was it anything more than typical white college kid angst?

“Look, you may not be too fond of your family now. But I—some people don’t have any family. It’s all a matter of perspective, right? It’s winter break, your brother’s in the hospital, you’re only home for the holidays. Can’t be so bad.”

Jillian shrugged. “Dr. Gorin doesn’t really care when I come back, as long as I’m in the lab by the middle of January.”

All Patty cared about right now was finishing her bagel and going. “Oh yeah, who’s that?” she asked, absentmindedly. “Your dean?"

“Nah, my Ph.D. advisor. She’s a Roman Candle like you,” Jillian added.

Patty blinked. “Ph.D.? I’m sorry, didn’t you say you’re 21?”

“Yeah, I’m barely legal,” Jillian said, leaning in and smirking, and then changed her tone when she saw the warning look on Patty’s face. She took a big bite of lox and spoke through it as she chewed. “But yeah, yeah, I finished my masters. Bout a year and a half away from completing my Ph.D. in nuclear engineering.” She swallowed and wiped a hand across her face.

“Wow. That is damn impressive.” Patty paused. “I’m surprised none of this came up at dinner last night—I thought Jewish parents love to brag about that stuff. Well, all parents do, but you know what I mean, right? Uh, I hope?”

Jillian gave her a weak smile. “Well. My family thinks that since I’m ‘good at science’, I ought to be a doctor.” Her voice suddenly shot up in volume and took on a tone Patty typically heard from sullen teenagers in the subway. “Except I DON’T want to and I’m NOT good with people so I shouldn’t have to be!” She punctuated this remark with an angry sigh.

Patty raised her eyebrows. “Anyone ever tell you you got a lotta anger about this?”

“Yeah. One of my ex-girlfriends. She was in school to be a therapist.” Jillian snickered to herself. Her mood seemed to have taken a turn for the darker, and now she seemed very much the adolescent. “Though I don’t know if she was really an ex, we just fucked for a month and then I got bored and stopped returning her calls.”

Patty must have raised an eyebrow, because Jillian laughed a little hollowly and leaned back in her chair. “Oh, you couldn’t guess?”

“Guess what?”

“I’m,” Jillian said with relish, widening her eyes and waving her arms around in the air like that was supposed to have an effect, “A DYKE. Big, old, scary dyke.” She stared at Patty as if daring her to react.

Patty closed her eyes. She felt way too old for this. But when she opened them, Jillian had both eyes downcast on the Formica table, and glanced up with a fleeting look of vulnerability. That look belonged to someone who needed reassurance.

“Baby, I got that loud and clear when you flirted your pants off with me ten seconds after you woke up.”

Jillian perked up. “They’re still on unfortunately, but thanks.”

Patty ignored the batting lashes and puppy eyes and went on. “I ain’t got no problem with that, especially personally, if you catch what I’m sayin’.” She paused, not bothering to look up to see if Jillian had correctly interpreted her meaning. The question now was not how to avoid telling more lies, but how to navigate the ones in which she’d already found herself tangled up. “Right now is… a confusing and stressful time for everyone. We all care a lot about your brother and want him to wake up safe and sound. That’s what we’ve got to focus on. Okay?”

She glanced at Jillian. The younger woman looked disappointed. Patty told herself not to do it, not to get more involved in this Grade-A mess, but…

“Here’s my phone number.” Patty dug in her purse for a pencil, then wrote it down on the back of the receipt and handed it over the table. “If you ever want to get away from your family, or just talk to someone, you can call.”

She walked Jillian back to the house.

“It was very nice getting to know you,” Jillian said with overexaggerated formality. “And welcome to the family.”

“Thanks.” Patty looked at the younger woman for a moment, critically. “You know, look. I—”

“Good _mor_ -ning!” called a familiar voice. Just down the block, Jessica Holtzmann was poking her head out the front door of the family brownstone. She stepped out, propping the door with her hip. “Hello, you two,” she said brightly, pulling her shawl more tightly around herself. “Now where have you been? I was starting to worry!”

“Morning! Jillian and I were just gettin’ acquainted,” Patty called back, with her best impress-the-parents smile. “She wanted to show me the deli around the corner.”

“Oh, Fischmann’s? We love that place.” This seemed to calm Jessica, and she began to smile in return. Then her eyes fell on her daughter, and her expression changed. “Jillian, darling, what _are_ you wearing? Get in the house, please. Your father wants to talk to you.”

Jillian hunched her shoulders over and walked dutifully up to the house, pulling her shearling jacket tightly to her body. All her hyperkinetic, caffeinated spark was gone; now she had an air of a prisoner returning to the cell.

Patty watched closely, struck by the strangeness of the interaction that came next. As Jillian approached, Jessica tremulously extended a hand as if to gently touch her daughter on the shoulder, or maybe on the cheek; but Jillian shrank away and went into the house without a word.

Jessica’s face fell. But almost immediately she put on a bright smile and walked out a few steps to greet Patty. “Bye, Patty! Have a good day at work. We’ll see you later at the hospital?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Patty said noncommittally. She needed to think about what she’d just seen.

 

  

 

But when she got home, Patty was distracted by the sight of the box of Gabriel’s things that she’d been given at the hospital. After a few minutes of deliberation, she decided to go through it. She couldn’t help it. It was just sitting there, looking so inviting! It practically wanted to be opened. And besides, she was going to put everything back.

Seated on her bed, she went through Gabriel’s expensive leather wallet first. There was a weathered family photo—him with his two parents and all of his siblings, including a visibly younger Jillian looking annoyed in a pearl-buttoned cardigan. Patty smiled to see it. There were also the usual credit cards and loyalty cards, all to businesses Patty wasn’t familiar with. His driver’s license (the photo was flattering, of course).

There wasn’t much else to see. A key chain full of keys, with a fob to an expensive, exclusive exercise club. A brown paper bag that Patty unwrapped curiously.

When she saw what was inside, she jumped off her bed, got dressed as fast as she could, and let her place in a rush.

She caught the train to Gabriel’s Midtown Manhattan apartment. It was a glamorous skyscraper that seemed to be made of nothing but glass panels. The lobby was buzzing with people who kept the doorman busy, so Patty managed to slip up into the elevator unnoticed.

She let herself into apartment number 1056 with Gabriel’s key, and experienced a moment of shock when she saw what it looked like inside. The place was gorgeous, with wall-to-wall white carpeting, modern black furniture, sleek electronics, and an absolutely killer view of the city. However, it hardly seemed lived in, and there was an almost tomblike hush on the place.

Patty pulled out the tin of cat food she’d found in Gabriel’s belongings. However, there didn’t seem to be a cat in sight, and it was hard to imagine any kind of pet living here. She removed her shoes and walked into the living room.

“Here, kitty, kitty…” She whistled, then remembered not all cats were as weird as her own. “Where are you, kitty cat?”

She went into the beautiful, streamlined galley-style kitchen, admiring the black granite countertops. If she lived here she’d add some flowers for color, but that was neither here nor there. “Kitty… kitty…”

She pushed open the white swinging door at the far end of the kitchen and almost screamed when it made hard contact with something. There was a loud _Thunk_!

Jillian Holtzmann emerged, groaning in pain and pressing one hand to the bridge of her nose where the door had hit her. In her other hand she held a Walkman with the CD still spinning around and around inside, attached to big headphones that she wore over her messy blonde hair.

“Oh my god!” Patty said, and reached out to Jillian. Guilt rushed through her body like a torrential rainfall. “I’m so sorry—are you okay?”

“Jus’ need some ice,” Jillian mumbled, looking dazed. She padded into the kitchen and leaned against the counter.

“Ice, ice, of course,” Patty repeated. She whirled around, looking for the refrigerator. The only problem was that all of the walls looked exactly the same, with floor-to-ceiling black cabinets, and all the appliances were hidden away. And while that might have been perfectly on-trend, right now it was nothing but damn inconvenient.

“Doesn’ really seem like you know where things are,” Jillian pointed out blearily, holding her nose.

“Don’t be rude,” Patty said automatically, as nerves twisted her stomach. Was Jillian noticing that she was a fraud?! She lunged for a cabinet she hadn’t tried yet and was relieved when it swung open to reveal a refrigerator. She pulled open the freezer compartment and grabbed an icepack. “Here.”

She handed it to Jillian, who thankfully didn’t ask her to find a tea towel to wrap it in. That would probably require a lot more frantic searching through the kitchen, making Patty look even more suspicious than she already did.

Jillian gingerly applied the icepack to her nose and slipped her headphones down around her neck. She stared at Patty balefully. “Why’d you do that?” she asked pitifully. “Are you mad at me?”

Terrible didn’t even begin to cover how Patty felt. “Baby, don’t be ridiculous! I didn’t even know you were in here! I’m sorry, I—was just looking for the cat, I thought I was loud enough that anyone coulda heard me—”

“Gabe has a cat?” Jillian said quizzically. “And no, I was listening to Devo. Couldn’t hear anything. My mistake, I guess.” She set her Walkman on the counter.

“Yeah, of course he has a cat,” Patty said nervously, waving the can of cat food.

“Huh. He doesn’t really seem like the type to—”

 _Meow_ , came a piteous-sounding mew, and a beautiful fluffy cream-colored Persian cat padded around the corner. Patty scooped it up, taking a swift look at its identification tag. “Hi, Fluffy,” she cooed, lifting it onto the counter. “You must be so hungry! I bet you are.”

She peeled open the can of cat food and set it on the counter, and the kitty began to eat quickly. Patty even managed to locate a bowl in the cupboards, and filled it with water from the sink, aware as she did so that Jillian was watching her every move. It was weird that Gabriel didn’t have cat dishes out, but then again maybe he did in some other room she hadn’t seen yet. This place was a maze.

“I forgive you for trying to kill me,” Jillian announced magnanimously.

“ _Kill_ —?”

“I know it was unintentional, and thus I absolve you due to your undoubtedly harmless aims,” Jillian continued. She made a little hand wave in the air and grinned at Patty, before wincing and holding the icepack closer to her nose.

“What were you doin’ here anyway?” Patty said at last.

“My parents sent me to pick up some of Gabe’s clothes,” Jillian said. “To be honest, I think they just wanted to get me out of the house.”

She spoke very carefully and neutrally. Patty was reminded of the angry way she’d talked about her family in the little deli on the day after Christmas. It gave Patty a strange, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Uh huh.” Patty looked at her feet. The cat was finished eating. It was time to go. “Well, guess I’d better head out. I’ll talk to the doorman about feeding this little guy.”

Jillian looked at her contemplatively. “Hey. D’you still wanna hang out?” she asked.

It was like Patty had been waiting for her to ask forever. 

“How about tonight?” she said.

 

 

At 6 p.m. that night, Patty went to her door, wrapping her blanket around her like a shawl.

She opened it. It was Jillian, draped in a suggestive pose in the doorway and dangling a six-pack on one finger. “I brought Heineken…” she said with a grin. Her nose, Patty noticed with a rush of guilt, only looked a little bruised.

Patty smiled. “I’m more of a wine drinker myself, but I accept the entry fee. You can come in.”

“Sorry. I should have expected nothing less from a such an elegant lady.” Jillian waggled her brows suggestively. She seemed to be in a very good mood tonight. She sidled under Patty’s arm into the door, not taking her eyes off Patty the whole time. Feeling cheerful, Patty closed the door and followed her in.

“Didn’t feel like hanging around with my family for another interminable night of ‘If only Gabriel were here,’ and ‘I wonder how Patty’s holding up?’” Jillian popped the top of one of the beers and swung herself up onto the counter of Patty’s tiny kitchenette. “No offense. Just figured I’d come straight to the source.”

Patty reached for the cabinet next to Jillian, meaning to get the popcorn kernels. But Jillian scooted over firmly and planted her body in front of the door so that she was pinned between Patty’s arms.

“What’s the password?” she purred, looking down at Patty with exaggerated bedroom eyes.

“The password is ‘get down off my counter, you think you’re some kinda bridge troll askin’ for passwords?’” Patty retorted, which sent the younger woman into an uncontrollable fit of giggles. She slid off the counter and flopped onto the couch, where she laid wrapped in Patty’s knitted afghan, drinking her beer and playing peekaboo with Major Barbara.

Patty air-popped the popcorn on the stove, then came to join Jillian on the couch.

“Figured we could watch old re-runs of TV shows for a while. I have a lot of movies on tape, too. If all else fails, I could probably dig up some board games.”

Jillian looked impressed. “Why don’t we just see where the night takes us?” She grabbed a huge handful of popcorn and ate it slowly.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Then Patty said carefully, “Look… You mentioned your family, so I just wanted to ask. It may not be any of my business, but is everything okay with them?”

Jillian gazed up at her seriously. “Well, I don’t know if you know this, but my brother’s in a coma. It’s been about a week, but the doctors think he’s going to be all right.”

Patty rolled her eyes. “Got that, thanks. No, I mean with you. You don’t seem too good with them.”

“Yyyyyeah.” Jillian’s face closed off.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you ain’t comfortable,” Patty said quickly, not wanting to put up a wall between them.

But Jillian seemed touched. “I, uh.”

“I mean, they seem good to me, they seem real nice, but… I’m just…” Patty paused, a lump rising in her throat. “I’m just a stranger.”

Jillian’s face got serious. She reached out a hand and placed it on Patty’s arm. “No, Patty. You’re part of the family. They already love you.”

“See…” Patty tried to phrase this right. “I just don’t get how you can say that when it comes to me, but when you talk about them, you seem to get really angry. And when you’re with them, it’s like you shut down.”

Jillian attempted a laugh. “Aw. Nice. I didn’t know it was that obvious.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I have eyes.” Patty put a comforting hand on Jillian’s sock-covered foot, which was only a little bit stinky.

Jillian sat up, putting one arm on the back of the couch. Patty respectfully gave her some space, watching carefully.

“Yeah. All right. How do I put this.” Jillian glanced at Patty. “I hate words,” she said helplessly, and Patty winced and tried to look encouraging. She continued.

“I—I know that they’re a good family. They’re just not… the right family for me, I think.” Jillian pressed her lips together hard, looking childlike and stubborn. “It’s always been like I’m a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit. I’m the oldest daughter, you know. Mom and Dad always wanted me to be a certain way. Smart, but not too smart. Girly. Dutiful. Straight. And I’m just _not_. I’m weird. I’ve tried not being weird, but it makes me feel—”

She gestured in the air aimlessly. Her fingers were shaking slightly. “Just like the air is thick and cottony. Like it’s not air that humans are supposed to breathe.”

Patty reached out, took Jillian’s trembling hand, and squeezed it.

Jillian blurted out, “And—I know they don’t mean to, but they make me feel like everything about me is _wrong_. That’s what it was always like at home for me. It was better when Gabe was home. He would stick up for me, say it was okay for me to like the things that I did and not like the things that I didn’t. We used to play together. He never judged me, always had time for me even though I was his kid sister. But he moved out when I was 12. It wasn’t so good after that.”

Jillian shrugged, biting her lip. “Then I got my scholarship for college when I was 16, so. Don’t come back home unless I really have to.”

“Wow. You ever talk about this with anybody?”

Jillian drew two pinched fingers across her lips like she was zipping them, and winked. Her eyes were a little shiny. “Talk is cheap.”

“Aw that’s enough, John Wayne.” Patty said without thinking. That made Jillian laugh. “Tough girl.”

“That’s _Jillian_ Wayne to you.” The younger woman put on a Western drawl.

“So I guess your brother bein’ in a coma counts as something that makes you want to come home,” Patty hazarded. She continued to hold Jillian’s hand between her own.

The sad, lost look returned to Jillian’s face. She pulled one corner of her mouth up noncommittally. “Well, I used to write and call him when I was still living at home. He was really good about it, always wrote back, always was there. But then I left for school myself. I guess then he figured I didn’t need him any more. I did though. I needed my big brother.” She added in a low voice, “I don’t even have his phone number any more.”

“Well, that’s just sad,” Patty said firmly.

“I guess.” Jillian heaved a sigh.

“Tell you what. Tomorrow, we’re going to the hospital, and you can tell your brother exactly how you feel. He’s gotta listen to you, he’s in a coma. You never know—maybe it’s just crossed wires. Subway trains passing in the night.”

Jillian sighed again, but this time in comfort. She nodded. “Okay. Thanks Patty.”

“You welcome, baby.”

“What about you?” Jillian pointed at Patty accusingly. “Don’t let me be the only one with family issues here tonight.”

“I need a drink if we gonna keep doing this therapy thing,” Patty said. She returned to the couch, pouring them each a glass of wine. Jillian held hers with her pinky out.

“I don’t have any family,” Patty said. “My mama died when I was little, when we were living in Michigan. So my daddy raised me. Then he got cancer, and he wanted to move here to be treated by the best research hospitals. There was a clinical trial. It was important to him.

“I had to drop out of college—got started late anyway because I went straight to work after college—go to work again to earn some money to pay for it. And… well, last year he decided he was tired of research, and he passed on. So I’ve just been here.”

Patty wasn’t crying. There was a somber, cold place in her soul like a stone where the memory her daddy belonged.

“You don’t have any pictures up of him,” Jillian pointed out quietly.

Patty shook her head. It was better if she didn’t think about it. To see her daddy’s face, handsome and laughing in every photo, even the ones she’d taken after he’d been admitted to Sloan Kettering in his final years, was too much. The pain would be too raw.

“So… would you go back to Michigan?”

“I got family there. But this is New York, you know? The capital of the world.” Patty grinned. “I ain’t leaving that. But I’ll tell you one thing. I want to go out of the country. I have no stamps on my passport, and that’s somethin’ that needs to change.”

She took a big sip of wine, and tried to pretend that the warm sensation it caused in her chest was enough to mask the hollow feeling that came with remembering her father.

Jillian gestured to the stacks of coffee-table books under Patty’s table. “Just a guess, but maybe… Italy and Greece?”

Patty laughed. “How did you know?”

“Oh, just a random guess.” Jillian’s eyes ran over the spines of the books, which included: _The Great Book of Italy, Rome: A Photographic Tour_ , _Ancient Greece: The Dawn of the Western World_ , and _Greece in Pictures_.

“There’s just something so fascinatin’ about those countries to me. The Greek and Roman civilizations, you know, were the birthplaces of democracy. Then they were completely wiped out! It’s crazy! After I do Greece and Rome, I’d like to go to England, because a lot of shit went down there too.”

“Tell me,” Jillian said, her eyes shining.

“Tell you what?”

“All the shit that went down.”

“ _All_ of it?”

“Yeah. I pretty much slept through history class. Teacher was a crusty old man, maybe if it were a hot lady I would’ve paid more attention.”

“That’s so sexist,” Patty said, disbelievingly.

“Not if I’m a lesbian!” Jillian sing-songed.

“I don’t think it works that way,” Patty said, trying to sound very stern.

“Okay, it was a joke.” Jillian wriggled over and put her head on Patty’s shoulder. “If you had been my history teacher I would’ve paid attention _alllll_ the time. I would’ve been your very best student.”

Patty felt her face grow warm. Lord, she was actually blushing.

“Okay. England started way the hell back when, but one of my favorite parts of its history is Henry VIII. You have to understand that the Church of England was basically established so he could annul his marriage and get married again to a different lady who he liked better. That’s the kinda nation we’re dealing with here. You may think the British are all prim and proper, but that could not be farther from the truth. Henry the Eighth…”

At around 2 a.m., Jillian fell asleep on the couch after nearly five hours of vivid storytelling, which had included some historical re-enactment, a little bit of interpretive dancing, and several eager questions and pointed interjections from Patty’s surprisingly interested audience of one. Rising, Patty tenderly tucked the quilt around her. For a moment she stood, contemplating the sweet, sleeping lines of the younger woman’s face.

Then she turned out the living room lamp, and went into her own bedroom.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Patty took Jillian to the hospital. She thought she might wait for the younger woman to be done, but when she saw through the glass how intensely Jillian was speaking to her unconscious brother, and all of the gestures and laughs and smiles and occasional tears that punctuated Jillian’s speech, she figured it might be a long time. She asked the nurse to tell Jillian that she’d left to give Jillian and Gabriel some privacy.

The day after that, Patty was home around five after working a morning to early afternoon shift when Jillian again knocked on the door.

She seemed slightly flustered when Patty opened the door, but this manifested as a jerky grin and some excess hand gestures.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said when she calmed down. “It’s an engagement present from my parents.”

“All right. Do you want to come in?” Patty asked, figuring Jillian had whatever it was and could give it to her right then.

“No, it’s downstairs in the truck.”

“In the _truck_?”

“My parents run an estate furniture business,” Jillian explained, droning it so quickly that Patty could barely make out the individual words. “Didn’t you know that?”

“So it’s…”

“A _surprise_ ,” Jillian insisted, and then stage-whispered, “It’s a couch.”

“Well, that’ll look way better at Gabriel’s place.” Patty actually could use a new couch, but foresight was key and she didn’t want to get into any awkward situation with returning the couch and all.

Downstairs was a medium-size cargo truck, with “Holtzmann               Estate Furniture Sales” written on the side in an antique-style script. “It used to be Holtzmann and Sons,” Jillian explained, merrily jangling a big chain of keys as they walked out of Patty’s building, “but then Dad only had Gabriel, and he went to law school and broke the collective family heart, so Dad scratched it off and now it’s just him.”

“What about you?”

“What I know about furniture could fill a tiny book,” said Jillian, almost haughtily. “A book for ants. Besides, I have no interest in the field.”

“And y’know,” she added, while courteously opening the passenger side door for Patty and showing Patty where to step to get up into the cab, “they don’t name businesses ‘Holtzmann and Son and Daughter.’ Or ‘Holtzmann and Spawn.’ ‘Holtzmann and Female Child.’ Don’t know why, but guess it’s just not the same thing as saying ‘Son’ and calling it a day.”

“It’s because women have only been allowed into the workforce in a respected capacity within the past century,” Patty said, after thinking this over. She felt indignant. “It’s nothing more the manifestation of sexism and patriarchal ideals!” Jillian snorted as she climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Well, good thing I never had any interest in buying and selling planks of wood. It’s radioactive particles for me or nothing. Off we goooo!” she sang, and floored the gas. Patty forgot all about history and concentrated on praying for her life.

Miraculously, Jillian pulled up in front of Gabriel’s apartment building half an hour later with both of their lives and all cargo intact. She parked. When they got out of the truck, Patty frowned.

“You’re not going to have much room here if you park that close to the car in front of you.” The front of the truck was about two inches from the rear bumper of the car in question.

“Nah, I needed to have room behind us in order to unload this thing,” Jillian explained. She jumped up onto the back of the truck, failed, winced, and tried again. This time she was successful, yanking up the truck’s back door with a loud creaking sound.

Inside was a very old couch, upholstered in a print with cream and navy blue damask flowers and accentuated with dark curlicued wood feet and trim. It was cute, in a dowager auntie’s house kind of way.

“Doesn’t really seem like Gabriel’s style,” Patty said doubtfully.

“Well, maybe it’s yours,” Jillian said, and then hesitated. There was an awkward pause. “Anyway, let’s get this thing into Gabe’s apartment!” she said too brightly.

Jillian would’ve made an excellent stage manager, Patty learned. She had an uncanny knack for turning corners with the awkwardly shaped couch, and was very good at getting people to scurry out of their way by either charmingly singing, “Beep beep, coming through!” or blasting the same phrase in a voice like a bullhorn. Luckily, the couch was not too heavy, so Patty avoided the back pain she’d been dreading when she saw that the engagement present was a couch.

They pushed the thing into Gabe’s foyer, both panting heavily. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to fit,” Patty wheezed.

“’Course it’ll fit, everything fits if you try hard enough,” said Jillian breezily. She pushed hard on the couch, and it popped free from where it was lodged in the door. Propelled by the slick surface of the wall-to-wall carpeting, the couch zoomed out in front of her and knocked heavily into a black-mirrored cabinet. A chic vase filled with black marbles and blue water and a single white orchid toppled over and shattered, leaving a growing blue stain on the pale carpet.

Jillian peeled herself off the carpet where she’d fallen flat on her face and stared wide-eyed at the damage. “Perfect. That’s where we’ll put the couch.”

After, Jillian did a happy dance down the apartment corridor to the elevator; apparently moving furniture was one of the things that pleased her in life. She even turned a cartwheel, her baggy shirt falling upwards to expose a patch of soft white belly, but Patty caught her by one ankle and threatened to carry her like that if she didn’t act civilized.

“I just like doing things with my hands,” Jillian said meekly, but walked obediently on both legs out of the building.

When they exited onto the street, Jillian dashed out and circled her truck. Another car had parked behind her, within an inch of the back bumper. “Aw nuts, they boxed me in!” she cried.

“Well, I _told_ you to leave some room in the front.” Patty had been right, of course, because she was always right.

“And I had a perfectly good reason not to,” Jillian sighed.

Patty checked the meter. “Look, you’re good to park here past 6 pm. You can come back tomorrow and get the truck.”

Jillian huffed in frustration and nodded. She went and leaned against the cab of the truck, her arms folded across her chest. For several moments neither of them said anything.

“Well… good night!” Patty turned and started to walk away. Maybe it wasn’t too late to catch a—

“Wait!”

Patty turned.

“I could walk you,” Jillian offered.

“That’s okay.”

“For protection.”

“That’s very nice, Jillian, but I don’t need any protection.”

“No, for me. You can’t just leave me all alone with my truck.”

“Okay,” Patty amended. She waited for Jillian to catch up. Jillian ran over to Patty excitedly, limbs flying every which way. She looped her arm through Patty’s like they were going to go on an old-fashioned promenade.

“Let’s go get hot chocolate.” she said eagerly. The truck seemed to be completely forgotten.

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s a little Italian place next to Central Park that puts so much whipped cream on top, it’s great. Let’s go.”

“Lead the way,” Patty said complacently. It wasn’t every day that she let someone else take the reins, but this was Jillian. Patty could allow it.

“Where are we?” Jillian craned her neck to look at the street signs on the corner coming up. “Oh, we just have to cross the park. Come on.” She tugged Patty along by the arm. “Let’s go!”

“The park is that way,” Patty pointed out, looking in the opposite direction, and Jillian danced around her, grabbed Patty’s other arm, and reversed course without missing a beat.

“That’s what I meant. Let’s go!”

Central Park was dark and romantic at night, lit only by lamps dotted throughout its many winding paths. Many other couples and families were there, which wiped out any of Patty’s fears about being in the park after dark.

It was really nice. She didn’t often get a chance to come way uptown like this.

They had strolled across the narrow length of the park and were at the far edge when an unassuming green awning came into view just at the park’s perimeter. It was in the basement level of an old brownstone apartment building. In lovely white cursive writing, the awning read, “Mucci’s.”

“There it is!” Jillian cried.

She dashed ahead, and suddenly wiped out completely. “Ice!” she shouted unnecessarily from the ground, rolling over and flopping onto her back like a starfish. “There’s ice. Watch out, Patty. I don’t want you to fall.”

Laughing, Patty waddled cautiously out into the ice slick. It must be black ice; it was completely undetectable. “Baby, are you okay?”

“Yep! I’m just fine. I—”

Patty shrieked as she lost her footing and fell down too. “My tailbone,” she moaned, rolling over onto her back.

Meanwhile, Jillian had managed to scramble to her feet. “I’ve got you,” Jillian said reassuringly, and then slipped again and sat down hard.

They floundered around for a little while. Finally, Patty lost her footing for the fourth or fifth time, and her patience went with it. “I give up,” she said resignedly, reclining to lie flat on her back. “I’m tired. If I squint hard enough, I can even pretend I can see the stars through all this light pollution.”

Jillian giggled exhaustedly, flopping back next to Patty. She stared up at the sky too. Their breathing evened out and seemed to synchronize. They rested there on their backs for what could have been minutes or hours.

Suddenly, in a quiet and fluid movement, Jillian rolled onto her side and became eye level with Patty. Her eyes were bright, her expression curious and wanting. She reached out and gently, so gently placed her hand on Patty’s arm, tracing her mittened fingers up and down.

Patty watched her do it. Tingles erupted on Patty’s cold skin where the younger woman traced, even through Patty’s thick winter jacket. It was like she was watching Jillian do this, and watching herself watch Jillian. She could hardly believe this was really happening.

Jillian raised her head—moving it closer to Patty. She was smiling slightly, pink lips curved up at the edges. In a moment she would—they would be— And Patty almost forgot how to breathe.

“H-How ‘bout that hot chocolate?” she said weakly, ruining the moment.

She thought she saw a flicker of disappointment in Jillian’s face. But the younger woman was up on her feet in no time. “Onward,” she said, almost as brightly as if nothing had happened at all. But Patty could tell the difference. With Jillian, she could always tell 

They cautiously made their way to the edge of the park, and for the rest of the night there was no mention of what had almost passed between them.

 

* * *

 

People didn’t usually come up to Patty’s MTA booth excitedly waving and calling her name, so she noticed real quick when one of Gabriel and Jillian’s sisters did it two days later.

“Patty, hi!” the girl said enthusiastically, beaming and coming right up to the glass. It was Rachel, the younger one, who was about 15. She was a sweet kid, with long curly dark hair that she usually kept in a careless braid down her back. Now she was wearing a long coat and a messenger bag, and was accompanied by another girl her age.

“Hey!” Patty was genuinely happy to see her, and not just because that was probably the friendliest greeting Patty had ever gotten while on the job. It was hectic and loud in the station, right in the middle of the midmorning rush, so Patty decided to break the rules and said, “Why don’t you just come on in here?”

The two girls piled in excitedly, as if getting to come inside the subway booth was the coolest thing to ever happen. They commented as much, looking around at everything in awe. Then Rachel remembered her manners and said, “Patty, this is my best friend, Lily. Lily, this is Gabe’s fiancée, Patty. You know, she saved his _life_.” This was delivered with all the dramatic gravitas of a teenage girl.

Lily’s eyes widened in excitement. “Ooh! It’s so nice to meet you! Is this the station where it, you know, _happened?_ ”

“It actually is. I—”

At the other end of the booth Patty’s coworker Inés whirled around, her little ears practically pricking up. Too late, Patty remembered she was here. “Did you say _fiancée?_ ” she asked.

“Uh—”

“You didn’t tell me you were ENGAGED!” Inés burst out in excitement. Inés was already married with a kid, but she thrived on big news from anyone else’s life. She was also a kind-hearted but ruthlessly efficient gossip. Now that she knew about Patty’s fake engagement, _everyone_ was going to know.

_Damn it._

“Girls, which train are you catching?” Patty said sweetly.

“We’re just going uptown to go through the holiday sales,” Rachel said, beaming.

“All right, you’re gonna wanna go, ‘cause the next train is comin’ in just a minute now. See you at your house soon,” Patty promised.

The two girls piled out. The door was barely shut behind them when Inés pounced, grabbing Patty’s hands and squealing with excitement.

“Oh my god! Girl, are you pregnant?”

“Oh, that’s right, Inés, I’m _pregnant_ ,” Patty said sarcastically.

“Shut up, you are?”

“No! My god! You have to do it to get pregnant.”

Inés suddenly grew very serious. “Are you tellin’ me you aren’t _doing_ _it_ with your fiancée? Is something wrong?”

Shoot. Patty had forgotten she was supposed to be engaged to a man who, before he fell into a coma, was presumably healthy and well. “No, no. We’re just… waiting until marriage,” she finished lamely.

At this Inés recoiled, looking as if Patty had just said she and Gabriel planned to convert to Scientology. A look of non-comprehension crossed her face. “ _Waiting_? Until _marriage_?”

 

* * *

 

It was eight p.m. on New Year’s Eve, and Patty was putting the final touches on her look. She was looking fly in a tight knit red dress, satin varsity jacket, big gold necklace, and new red Jordans. All she needed was a little more lipstick, maybe switch the gold bamboo hoops for the ones with her name in them, and…

The doorbell rang. A little irritated and a little flustered, Patty waited a full minute before going to get it. She simply couldn’t stab her earring into her ear, so gave up and went to answer the door with the gold hoop in her hand.

Jillian Holtzmann gave her a look that was the equivalent of a wolf whistle.

Now, normally Patty appreciated a good up-and-down, but not when she was still getting ready. “What are you doing here?” she said, a bit more waspishly than she would have if fully prepared.

Jillian raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I was in the neighborhood.”

She was acting weird. Patty narrowed her eyes.

“Why are you actin’ weird?”

“Me?” Jillian said, in a stagey voice of surprise. “ _Moi_? Weird, you say?”

Patty sighed. “All right, Katharine Hepburn, I ain’t got time for this. I got places to go.”

“Plans, eh? Where are you going?” Jillian sidled into the apartment and shut the door behind her. Underneath her man’s overcoat, she was wearing an outfit that would perfectly look at home on someone’s grandpa: a long brown cardigan, a T-shirt underneath a tweed vest, some loose-fitting trousers and some old beat-up looking sneakers. They couldn’t have looked more mismatched if they’d tried.

“I’m goin’ to a New Year’s party,” Patty explained, like this should be obvious, which is should, “considerin’ that tonight is New Year’s Eve.”

“I’ll take you,” Jillian said immediately. “I’ve got the truck.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s really close, I’m just going to walk.”

“I transport all sorts of big loads in that truck,” Jillian blurted out. “I can transport you.”

Patty stared at her. “Big _loads_?”

It seemed to take a minute for Jillian to decode Patty’s expression, and then she full-body winced. “I didn’t mean that YOU’RE a big load. I—just—C’mon, let me take you!”

“Fine!” Patty burst out. It was already 8:15, and she didn’t like to arrive at a party much later than half an hour after it started. She didn’t do fashionably late, she did “politely early” so that she could stake out the party and figure out her plan of action for the night. Always good to be prepared. “Just put this earring in for me.”

Jillian did as she was told. Her fingers, when she took the earring from Patty’s hand, were warm and slightly callused. She carefully put the earring in and fastened it.

“These are fun,” Jillian said, tracing the curly script that spelled Patty’s name within the curl of the gold earring. She was still so close to Patty’s side that Patty could feel her warm breath on Patty’s ear. “I like them.”

Patty pointed a finger at her. “I haven’t forgiven you for ‘big loads’ yet. You’re my chauffeur, nothing else.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They drove the few blocks to Inés’ apartment, and Jillian managed to find parking on the tiny, packed two-way street.

Patty didn’t realize that Jillian had ducked in with her until they were standing in front of the door to Inés’ apartment. “Baby, if you wanted an invite to a party, you coulda just ask—”

The door swung open. Inés was tottering in front of them, looking as glamorous as all get out in a pair of strappy platform heels and a tight party dress. She was supported by one of her many cousins, a pretty baby-faced girl whose name was either Maria or Liliana. Patty had met all the cousins before, but there were so many that even she couldn’t keep the names straight.

“Patty!” Inés squealed. “Oh, you made it! So glad to see you! And who’s this?”

“Holtzmann,” Jillian said before Patty could interject. She bowed and winked. “Jillian Holtzmann.”

Inés’ cousin’s eyes went wide. She seemed charmed. “ _Holtzmann_?” She glanced significantly at Inés. “It’s Patty,” she turned to yell to the party at large. “And her _fi-an-cée_!”

Jillian’s eyes almost bugged out of her head and she looked like she wanted to bolt. But Inés pulled the door shut, and then they were inside for good.

Somehow they ended up being pulled into the center of the apartment living room, where a table had been set up as an impromptu bar. Everyone was so friendly, congratulating the two of them on their supposed engagement. “Great-looking couple!” exclaimed a total stranger, and Patty wanted to sink through the floor.

Another cousin who seemed to be doing bartending duty beamed at Patty. “Hey, girl! Lookin’ good! You want some punch?”

“You know I do,” Patty said gratefully, reaching out for a cup of garishly colored red punch studded with maraschino cherries. She took a sip and almost threw her drink out of her hand in surprise.

Jillian was suddenly all up in Patty’s grill, stretching up to her full five feet and four inches’ height. “I don’t think you should drink that!” she shouted over the noise of the party.

All Patty could do was laugh. “After what you’ve put me through tonight, I _need_ a drink!”

Jillian burst out, “No! You shouldn’t drink, because it’s not good for the baby!” 

With perfectly horrible timing, the entire room went silent.

 

 

 

Jillian’s truck forgotten behind her, Patty stormed down the freezing New York City block, ignoring the many revelers that tumbled around the sidewalk.

Jillian followed Patty down the street, apologizing. She was like a bunny hopping along behind Patty, and Patty paid her about as much attention as an actual animal would get (which was not a lot).

“I’m sorry, okay?” Jillian shouted for what seemed like the tenth time. “It’s just that Rachel said she overheard you saying that you were preg—”

“I was jokin’ around with Inés! That’s what coworkers do! That’s what friends do!”

“I know, but—”

“And I don’t understand why none of y’all couldn’t have just called me to play confirm or deny! Instead they sent you, the world’s weirdest, most passive-aggressive living telegram!”

They had arrived in front of Patty’s building. She almost wished she lived farther—she was full of plenty of steam. Hell, she probably could’ve walked all the way uptown and she still would’ve been mad.

“I’m sorry I was weird! I just—I thought something was off, and I was right! What’s so wrong with that?” Jillian had finally caught up. Her cheeks were bright pink in her pale face, likely due to both the cold and the argument.

“It’s just not polite! You think something’s up, you _ask_ me! Don’t wig out in front of all my friends! Now everyone’s gonna think I’m—” Patty took a deep breath. “You know what, never mind.”

Jillian paced in a U-shaped turn, and placed her bare hand on the brick wall of the apartment exterior. She was shaking her head and seemed agitated. “I’m just saying. You and Gabriel aren’t the most… obvious match.”

That touched a nerve Patty hadn’t known was exposed. She had to fight to keep herself from screaming at the top of her lungs. Instead, her voice grew scary quiet and calm.

“Oh yeah? So you think that the only reason your brother would be engaged to me is because I got pregnant?”

“No!” Jillian looked like she was in way over her head. “No! That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying that I don’t think that you’re Gabe’s type.”

“Yeah?” Patty flung at her. “Then whose type am I?”

Nothing. There was only meaningful silence from Jillian as she stood there looking at Patty. And a bright, almost defiant, yet hopeful look on her face, one that Patty had no wish to interpret, not when there were so many hurtful options as to what it could possibly mean.

Snow was falling quietly from the sky. Flakes landed on Jillian’s blonde hair and her pink cheeks, but she didn’t seem to move or mind.

Patty sighed. “All right then. Good night, Jillian.”

She got out her keys and rustled around until she found the master key to unlock the building door. But then Jillian darted in the door and thumped up the stairs behind her.

“I just want you to be happy, Patty. Do you really think that you’d be happy with Gabe? Y’know what, do you think your dad would be happy to see how you’re living your life, still working for the MTA and not traveling to England and Greece and Rome like you’ve always wanted to do?”

Her eyes were bright and her expression passionate, as if she thought she was doing Patty a favor by pointing all of this out. Well, clearly she didn’t know Patty well enough.

“I don’t _need_ this from you, especially not tonight!” Patty exploded. “It’s New Year’s Eve, for God’s sake! Stop tryin’ to ruin my holiday!”

Before she could stop herself, she added, “And who are you to talk to me about bein’ happy? Look at you and your family! You happy with how things are with them?”

“We all have to make sacrifices for family,” Jillian said stiffly.

“That’s real nice, talk to me about sacrifices you make for your family when I’ve told you all about mine. That is, the lack of mine.”

Patty unlocked her door and opened it. She turned to Jillian for the final time. She could feel the tears rising in her eyes.

“I don’t have anybody.”

“You have Gabe,” Jillian said stubbornly not but very kindly, as if that should be obvious.

“I have no one,” Patty repeated. Tears escaped and fell down her cheeks. Suddenly she just felt exasperated, exhausted, and in need of sleep and the promise of a new day tomorrow. “Good night, Jillian.”

“Happy New Year,” she heard Jillian blurt out as she entered her apartment, but she didn’t turn around or acknowledge it.

She closed the door and rested her back on it, closing her eyes as she did so. 

“Happy New Year,” she whispered to her empty apartment.

 

* * *

 

It was early the next morning when Patty got Isaac’s call, his voice hoarse over the line.

“Come to the hospital! Right now! Right away!”

Thirty minutes later Patty dashed into the hospital lobby. She was met by Isaac, who was so excited he could hardly speak.

“Isaac, what’s goin’ on?”

“He woke up!” Isaac crowed. “Gabriel woke up!”

Patty instinctively started backing up, but Isaac grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into the elevator.

When they got to the floor, the rest of the Holtzmanns were already crowded around Gabriel’s bed.

“The nurse said he woke up an hour ago, so he’s bound to open his eyes any time now,” Jessica said in a stage whisper. Patty winced and leaned back. She could just see the tantalizing red EXIT sign in the hall. Maybe if she just made a break for it now, everything could be forgiven…

Without any warning, Gabriel’s long-lashed eyes flickered open. He stared out at them with blue eyes that were wide with disorientation.

“Hi, _Gabriel!_ How are you, honey?” Jessica cooed.

Gabriel didn’t answer. His gaze swung from family member to family member: from Jessica to Isaac, to Rachel to Sarah to little Jonathan, to Patty, finally to Grandma Holtzmann—and then back to Patty.

He focused on Patty. “Who are you?” he asked curiously.

Patty’s stomach sank. _Well, that’s it._ _The jig is up_.

“Oh my god,” Isaac said wonderingly. Patty thought she was going to be sick.

“He’s got _amnesia_!” Isaac declared, and everyone burst into exclamations of disbelief and shock.

Patty thought weakly that she dearly needed to have some words with God as to why he kept cutting her the breaks when at this point, it honestly would just be easier if she could exposed for the liar that she was. Because this— 

This was just too much.

 

 

 

Gabriel’s doctor, inexplicably, backed up Isaac’s claim by explaining that yes, selective amnesia could sometime occur, and the best thing to do right now was to support Gabriel in this difficult time and remind him of all of the many wonderful memories they shared. Now the family was conversing busily amongst themselves. “Can you believe that? Selective amnesia? So odd.” “I’d never have believed he would forget his own fiancée, of all people…”

Heavy with guilt, Patty turned around from where she’d been resting her head against the wall. “Look, I’ve got to tell you something. I was never—”

“Pregnant?” said Grandma Holtzmann with her thick accent. She fixed Patty with a beady but fond eye. “We know.”

“Huh?”

“Jillian told us.” Grandma H patted Patty’s hand. “Now don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of time for that.”

“Well, speak of the devil!” boomed Isaac. Jillian came out from behind Patty, the elevator doors sliding shut behind her.

“Jillian, Gabriel’s woken up!” Jessica said. “But—you’ll never believe what’s happened. He’s got selective amnesia. He doesn’t remember who Patty is!”

Jillian raised her eyebrows into a comical expression of shock that somehow didn’t seem quite as shocked as everyone else had been. Her eyes slid over to Patty.

Patty winced.

Much later, after they repeated the whole charade, Gabriel coming back into consciousness and again professing not to recognize Patty, Jillian drove them back to Patty’s apartment in the family truck. Both of them were silent until the truck pulled right up in front of her building. It was almost tangible that something had changed, and that their idyll together had abruptly ended, almost before it had even begun.

For Patty, that meant that she had to ‘fess up. She _had_ to. The man was awake for God’s sake. He thought he had amnesia because of her lies. That simply wasn’t acceptable.

But there was also something else.

Finally Patty spoke.

“Look, Jillian, starting tomorrow, things are probably going to be kinda different.”

“Yeah,” Jillian agreed. She gazed at Patty warmly, her blue eyes steady in the dim light in the truck’s cab. She’d been remarkably subdued at the hospital with her family. She’d actually seemed really happy to see her brother woken up, and stayed behind a minute to talk to him before taking Patty home.

Patty swallowed. Should she reach for Jillian’s hand? That would only make it harder. “I just wanted you to know that you’ve become a really… good friend.”

She didn’t want to see the disappointment that crossed Jillian’s face. She climbed down from the truck hatch as quickly and gracefully as she could, avoiding stepping into the snowy boulevard as she shivered in the cold winter air.

“Patty!”

Jillian appeared around the side of the truck. She rubbed the back of her neck. “I just want to say that I didn’t mean what I said the other day, about you and Gabe. That was rude of me. Uncalled for. I think you two are going to make a really terrific couple, and uh, I’m really glad you won’t be alone anymore.”

Patty nodded, full of emotion. “Thanks, I… thanks. Goodbye, Jillian.”

“Goodbye.” Jillian gave her a nod and a fond little salute. With a heavy sigh, Patty unlocked the outer door and walked up her apartment stairs, and didn’t turn around to see if Jillian was watching her or not—despite how badly she wanted to.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Patty walked into Gabriel’s hospital room with the box of his things, trying to be very quiet. Gabriel seemed to be nodding off, though he was sitting upright in his bed. She set his box down.

“Patty!”

She turned in surprise to find that Gabriel was sitting up, wide awake. “Hello!” he said, with a pleasant smile. He had a green fisherman’s sweater on over his hospital gown, and looked just as handsome as he ever had.

“Well, hi!” she said. She didn’t know how to modulate her tone. She felt incredibly stiff and awkward.

Gabriel continued to smile. There was something simultaneously dazed and hyperalert about his expression, as if he was concentrating extra hard on her. “Would you like a sandwich?” he asked, gesturing to the tray in front of him.

“Oh, no, I’m good. Just ate.” Patty remained standing by the door. Remembering why she’d come, she pointed to the box she’d just set down. “I, uh, brought you your things.”

Gabriel looked excessively grateful. “Oh, thank you! You know, I just really wish I could have my own clothes.”

“I like your blue pinstripe suit,” Patty said, without realizing how that might sound. But Gabriel beamed.

“Oh, that one’s my favorite.” He gestured to the chair next to his hospital bed. “Please, sit down.”

So Patty sat. This felt very surreal; it was strange now to sit so close to Gabriel, after spending so much time gazing at him from a distance, or being near him when he was comatose. And there was something else, too. It was like going to a play and then approaching one of the actors after for an autograph or something, and seeing all of their exaggerated makeup up close. It ruined the illusion. With Gabriel it wasn’t his face that was different but—his voice, which was neither deeper nor higher than she’d imagined it, just not the same. And there was something off about his personality too, which seemed less like that of the hard-charging lawyer he allegedly was and more like that of a convalescent.

_Well of course he seems like a convalescent, you made the man think he’s got amnesia for God’s sake! Fix this, Patty!_

Patty winced. The voice in her head often sounded suspiciously like her daddy’s. She knew for a fact that he would not have stood for this— _any_ of this. Were he still around, the whole charade wouldn’t have lasted for more than a day. He would have called the Holtzmanns himself if he’d had to.

But then again, if her daddy were still around she wouldn’t have been hurting so bad for a family, and chances were high to none that none of this _would_ have ended up happening in the first place.

“Are you all right?” Gabriel asked considerately. He peered at her with his big blue eyes. “You seem sad. A little distant.”

Patty was getting lost in her head. She shifted in her seat, putting on a smile. “Oh, I… I’m sorry, Gabriel. I guess I am.”

A thought seemed to strike him. “Is it because of me?”

“Well. Yeah.” Patty nodded. “Actually, there’s a lot of factors. I’m thinking about your family, too.”

Gabriel nodded as if mirroring her. “That makes sense. I hope that before all of this,” he gestured at the hospital room around them, “I made you happy, not sad.” This was phrased lightly, like a joke. So funny, to be sitting around with your amnesiac fiancé, getting him to remember things piece by piece!

She smiled gently at him, trying to figure out the best way to back out of this situation without causing any more psychological damage.

“Well, I _can_ tell you this. You always gave me something to look forward to every day.” Patty meant on the train, but realized how it might sound. Oh, this was twisted. She was basically putting false memories into this poor man’s head.

“You know, you do remind me of someone.” His eyes widened. “It’s probably you!”

Patty raised her eyebrows in return. “That so?”

“Yes. Now listen.” Gabriel reached out and cupped her hands. She almost melted. His hands were so warm and strong.

He spoke with soft intensity. “My family’s been telling me so much about you. You seem so fantastic, and I just can’t believe… I can’t believe I don’t remember anything about you.”

Patty shook her head. “Now look…

“I can’t believe that I have such a wonderful, caring, heroic fiancée,” Gabriel continued, politely cutting her off, “because to be perfectly honest, the way I remember myself before all of this,” he again gestured to the room around them, “was… not the best.

“Well, that’s putting it too nicely. I was a schmuck. I had courtside tickets to the Knicks, a full stock portfolio, and an apartment on Rue St. Honoré. But I don’t remember the last time I called or wrote my family.”

“I think you’re bein’ a bit unfair to yourself.”

Gabriel shook his head. “No, I mean it. I was a man with no one to trust. No one he wanted to have children with. I’ve learned that facing death makes a man re-evaluate his life, and that re-evaluation wasn’t pretty.

“So to wake up and find that I’m engaged to you, who my family loves, who _saved_ me, I feel—it feels like a second chance, you know? Like divine intervention: _deus_ _ex_ _machina._ Except—” he laughed, clasping her hands, “ _deus ex Patty_! You know?”

Patty, captivated by the intensity of his speech, nodded along. Even though she knew this was wrong, there was something so stirring about being called someone’s guardian angel. Guardian god. God on a machine. _Whatever!_

Gabriel squeezed her hands even tighter and stared into her eyes. It was like watching a silent film star, his face was so emotive. “So what I want to say, Patty, is—will you marry me? Again?”

It hit Patty like a thunderclap. “W—what?”

“I mean it,” Gabriel said with sincerity. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve someone who saved my life, but—I’m so grateful and I know that you can make me a better man.”

“Oh my god, I…”

It was like she was caught in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. On one hand, there was everything what just wasn’t right about this situation. On the other hand, there was her long-lost Christmas vision of a family: her handsome husband and all their kids, the cozy house in the suburbs. Gabriel and the Holtzmanns could give her all of that. They already loved her. All she had to do was say yes, and she’d be part of this ready-made family…

And at the back of her mind was the swarm of butterflies that only seemed to descend upon her when she was around not Gabriel, but—Jillian. The warm ease they had together. The way she felt when Jillian reached out to touch her. But…

“Okay. Yes,” Patty heard herself say in a shaky voice. “Yes, I will marry you.”

Gabriel laughed out loud in delight and clapped his hands. In that moment, he reminded Patty of someone—his sister, who shared that childlike excitement.

_Oh no. What have I done?_

Gabriel fished around, pulling a twist-tie off the table next to the bed. He wrapped it around Patty’s ring finger, fashioning a little boxy square out of the ends on top so it looked like a cartoon version of a diamond ring. Patty felt tears spring to her eyes—it was so romantic. The gesture was so romantic.

“Just for now,” Gabriel said grandly. “Until I can get out of this hospital bed and get you the real thing. 

She leaned in to kiss his cheek and wondered, for what she hoped would be the last time, just exactly what she thought she was doing.

 

 

 

Patty wore a ballet flat on one shoe and a satin heel on the other. She had an old dress on, a cream-colored linen shift with three-quarter length sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, and she was agitated because this wasn’t a dress that she particularly liked, but she’d had it since a department store sale a few years back and it wasn’t as if every woman just had several white dresses lying around.

In her other hand she held up a white dress, velvet, which wasn’t much better, but maybe if she wore the right jewelry… Patty tipped her head to the side critically, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling creeping up inside of her.

A knock came on the door and she almost dropped the dress she was holding. She was jumpy. She stuck her head through the space between the hanger and the top of the dress and went to get it.

She opened the door. It was Jillian with her aviator jacket on, looking like the bad boy in every John Hughes movie Patty had ever seen. As if on cue Patty’s heart started beating faster.

“Hey,” Jillian said, and winked. But today it seemed sort of forced.

“Hey,” Patty responded, too quickly. She swallowed. “Do you want to come in?”

Jillian nodded, shoving her hands into her pockets. She didn’t come in with the ease she’d entered Patty’s apartment every other time she’d been there. There was a stiffness that had never been there before, a touch of something cool.

As soon as they were in, door closed behind them, Jillian did an about-face, looking Patty up and down with a face that seemed forcedly blank.

“Wow, so that’s the wedding dress, huh? Works good as a tie too.”

“Yeah.” Patty smiled weakly. She unhooked the dress from her neck and tossed it onto the couch. “Do—”

She had been going to ask what Jillian thought of the dress she was wearing, but realized just how awkward that would be. “Yeah.”

The unspoken facts hung in the air between them. Patty was getting married tomorrow. To Jillian’s brother. She and Jillian had almost kissed in the park. Looking at Jillian now was making her feel dizzy in a way that she didn’t know how to understand.

Jillian ducked her head and cleared her throat. She dug into the pocket of her aviator jacket and produced a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

“I just wanted to give you this before all the wedding presents started to pile up. I was dropping some furniture off in Little Italy, I looked out the truck window, and…”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Patty unwrapped it. It was a snow globe of the Parthenon.

“I remembered how you talked about how Athens was the birthplace of democracy. Made it seem pretty neat. You know you did, because I paid attention, and that’s no easy feat.” Jillian grinned, and the flash of happiness on her face made Patty swallow hard.

She inverted the snow globe. Artificial snowflakes swirled around the ruined pillars rendered in miniature and Patty smiled automatically, as if it was a childlike reflex to smile at something so beautiful and sweet. “It’s lovely,” she said honestly.

Jillian was watching Patty’s face closely, but when Patty looked up to meet her eyes, Jillian glanced away for a moment. “And I wanted to say that I think that Gabe is a very lucky guy.”

“Thank you.” Patty’s voice sounded calm to her own ears.

Jillian grinned ruefully, shuffling her feet. “Aw, I have to say that because you’re going to be my sister-in-law.”

“Ha ha,” Patty said weakly. Her throat felt thick with sadness, but she also felt like she was drowning in impatience. As soon as tomorrow came, she could have a fresh start. As soon as she and Gabriel were married, that would rule out all these strange in-between feelings she was having for Jillian. That was what was going to happen. It had to be.

“I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other then,” Jillian said at last. “I’ll come home more to see you.”

“Really?” Patty’s usual way with conversation was utterly failing her now. _Say something!_ her mind was screaming at her. But she couldn’t. What could she possibly say? “But you hate coming home.”

“Yeah. Um. It’s not so bad, now that Gabe and I have made up.” Jillian looked directly at Patty. “Thanks mostly to you. I want you to know that.”

Again Patty found that she didn’t know what to say.

“Anyway, I’d better get going.” Jillian twitched, rocking forward onto the balls of her booted feet as if she wanted to reach out for Patty—but kept her hands shoved into her pockets. She turned out and went out into the hall.

“Wait—Jillian? Jillian.” Patty stepped into the doorway after her fiancé’s sister. She couldn’t stop the words that came out of her mouth. “Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t marry your brother?”

Jillian’s face said everything. She looked up at Patty with eyes full of meaning.

“I can’t,” she finally said. Then with one long last, sad look, she turned and left.

All Patty could do was stand at the top of the stairs and watched Jillian go, a cold empty feeling in her chest.

 

* * *

 

It was noon the next day.

Patty hurried into the hospital, dressed in her white dress. She was sweating by the time she got to the hospital chapel, and almost rushed right past the open arched doors.

Her heart leapt when she saw Gabriel standing at the altar in a gray suit. _Not one of his best suits, but he is in the hospital, so…_ He was still using an IV pole, which was just the first tip-off that this wedding was being held under extraordinary circumstances.

Still, the pews of the little hospital chapel were filled with people on both sides of the aisle. The Holtzmanns were at the front of one, Inés and Patty’s boss were midway down the other, and there were several random hospital patients and family members who seemed to attending just to have something to see.

The church organ started up, then stopped abruptly when Patty took a step down the aisle and promptly did an about face to tear off her jacket and toss it into a back pew. Taking a calming breath to quell her nerves, Patty carefully held the spray of pale pink tulips she’d picked up from the corner bodega in front of her. The church organ again began to play “Here Comes the Bride.” All of the eyes on her didn’t even make her stumble as she walked sedately down the aisle, forcing herself to keep a steady pace in her low cream-colored heels.

But as she kept her head high, Patty’s eyes were not on her husband-to-be. Instead she couldn’t keep them off who stood to his left, as his woman of honor: his sister Jillian.

Jillian was dressed in a tailored suit, an oversize black jacket with jagged metallic splotches, accentuated by a large pink tie. She wore her usual smoky eye makeup, and some dark red lipstick for the occasion, her usually untidy hair swept back into a version of a French twist. She looked, honestly, extremely sexy—a more androgynous Debbie Harry. She didn’t take her eyes off of Patty, and the smile on her face was bittersweet.

A familiar wreath of butterflies lifted Patty’s stomach, and in that moment she knew what she had to do.

She reached the altar and took her place across from Gabriel, who smiled kindly at her.

The hospital chaplain looked indulgently at the two of them, then cleared his throat and started reading from his book. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to—”

“I object,” Patty blurted out. _Well, that was fast._

“But I haven’t finished the vows yet!” said the chaplain, sounding scandalized.

“I would have to object, too,” Jillian said, raising one finger.

“What about you?” the chaplin asked Gabriel.

“Well—I don’t know!” Gabriel said, looking completely confused.

In the front row, Jessica stood up in horror. “Jillian, what did you do?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Patty said, turning to face the pews. “It was me.” She cleared her throat and looked directly at Gabriel and Jillian’s parents. “Jessica… Isaac. I’m not in love with your son. I’m in love with your daughter.”

Just like that, the chapel got so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

But Patty glanced at Jillian and it was like all the light streaming through the chapel windows had decided instead to shine out of Jillian’s face.

Patty’s heart seemed to swell a few sizes. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to grab Jillian’s hand and run skipping down the aisle, to flag down one of the horse-drawn carriages that circled Central Park and ride it off into their snowy fairy tale perfect ending. But first she had a lot of very real problems that needed to be resolved.

She couldn’t look back at Jillian until she’d fixed this. All of it.

She turned to everyone in front of them. Jessica was shaking her head numbly. Patty steeled herself, because this wasn’t going to be good.

“I—I can’t believe it,” Jessica said. A lump swelled in Patty’s throat, and she just _felt_ for Jillian. “You and Jillian? It’s true?”

“Yes.”

Jessica’s eyes filled with tears. She moved her hands helplessly. “It’s just that—when Jillian told me she liked women, I thought it couldn’t possibly be true. I’d never known anyone like that. I thought it was a phase, that nice, normal people could never lead lives like that. But you, Patty—if you’re also that way, then…”

Tears were running down her cheeks as she turned to her daughter. “Then, Jillian, I terribly misjudged you. I’m so sorry.”

Jillian stared at her mother with a cold, almost blank expression on her face. Then, her face crumpled a little bit. She stepped off down the altar, moving to the front row to embrace Jessica.

It felt terribly awkward to interject, Patty had to anyway. “Well, actually I… I like both.” Patty started to gesture at both Gabriel and Jillian, then realized that probably wasn’t the way to go and lowered her hand. “Men and women, that is.”

“Oh!” Jessica said brightly, nodding as she patted Jillian’s back. It was clear that she was in way over her head, but she would be damned if she wasn’t going to try to get it right. “Well, that’s perfectly fine too!”

Jillian turned from her mother’s embrace, and practically bunny-hopped up to the altar to Patty. She was beaming. She was almost there when—

“Uh,” Gabriel said. Everyone (including Patty) seemed to have forgotten he was there. They now turned to him. “So… Patty… You and I…”

Patty closed her eyes. “Well now, that’s somethin’ else.” _Man, this is going to be rough_.

She looked out at Isaac, Jessica, Grandma Holtzmann, and all the kids. She just couldn’t look at Jillian while she said this.

“I have something to confess. The day that Gabriel went to the hospital, things got really confused. I went to see him and someone—” She glanced out into the audience, where a familiar dark-haired nurse caught her eye, looking both apologetic and unapologetic. “Someone decided to say that I was his fiancée so I could go see him, see how he was doing—and then—everything in the hospital room just started happening so fast.

“So while I did pull Gabriel off the tracks and save his life, we were never engaged. In fact, Gabriel and I had never even met before that day.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Jillian said quietly, stunned, from where she stood below the altar.

Patty addressed her directly. “I couldn’t. I’m so sorry.”

Patty took a deep breath. She was fighting back tears at this point. She wiped them with the back of her hand and continued, looking out into the pews at Isaac.

“I know—believe me, I _know_ what I did was wrong. The thing is, I fell in love with you.”

“You fell in love with _me_?” Isaac said incredulously.

Patty had to laugh, wiping away a few fallen tears. “No. All of you. You made me feel like I was part of a family, and that was something I hadn’t had in a really, really long time.”

She turned to Gabriel. “So, although you didn’t propose to me, you gave me a family. And I will always be grateful for that.

“So, thank you, and I will always treasure the time we had together. And I am truly sorry for misleading you.”

Jessica’s eyes were shining bright with tears. Isaac’s face was bright with emotion. Jillian was staring at Patty as if she was re-explaining the world as Jillian had previously understood it.

Patty took a deep breath and set her tulips down on the chaplain’s stand. “I’ll go now.”

Suddenly, there was a clamor at the entrance to the chapel. A young, well-dressed woman came striding up the aisle. “Excuse me!” she said in a ringing voice. “I object to this marriage!”

“Get in line!” said the chaplain, who looked like he could use a stiff drink.

“I object,” the woman continued, “because Gabriel Holtzmann is engaged to _me_.”

A tall man ran up the aisle after her. “Well, I object to your objection, Sylvia! Because you’re still married to me!”

“Gabriel, you proposed to a _married_ woman?” Jessica shrieked, sounding like she was ready to murder her eldest son.

Patty slipped out of the hospital chapel as chaos broke loose.

  

* * *

 

 

**_2 Weeks Later_ **

“I’m really going to miss you,” Inés said tearfully. “I can’t believe it’s your last day!”

“I know,” Patty said. “I’m going to miss you too. But—it’s time for something new.”

There was nothing like getting fake-engaged to a man in a coma, making yourself part of his family, and then falling for his little sister to make you re-evaluate your life priorities. Patty had learned this the hard way.

Inés pointed at her. “You’d _better_ send me all the postcards from Europe, you hear me?”

“Promise,” Patty said with a grin. They hugged it out.

“Love you, girl.” Inés slipped out of the booth, leaving Patty all alone.

A few minutes later, someone knocked on the glass. Patty looked up, automatic service smile on her face. It dropped right off when she saw who it was.

She saw the hair first. The crazy, tousled blonde curls piled on top of a little face. Patty had to adjust where she was looking, glancing down; by that time she already knew who it was.

But that didn’t make her have any less butterflies in her stomach or nerves snapping like rubber bands underneath her skin.

“Hey,” Jillian Holtzmann said, with a knowing smirk on her face. Aviator jacket, swagger, smile that made Patty want to melt: all present and fully accounted for.

Shell-shocked, Patty pressed the intercom button. “Hey,” she said back.

Passengers on the subway platform looked up and around in confusion. Cursing inwardly, Patty spoke into the window button instead. “Hey.”

Jillian gestured to the booth’s side door. “Come on out of there.”

Patty walked out slowly, not caring that this was entirely against protocol. She was only supposed to leave her booth under subway-related circumstances. Personal matters didn’t count. But what the hell, this was her last day.

“You didn’t call me,” Patty said without preamble. “After…” _After I ran out on marrying your brother and admitted we’d never been engaged in the first place, and confessed that I was in love with you._ “After the wedding.”

“Well, I didn’t know what to say,” Jillian admitted. “The whole thing was a bit coconuts, you know? Just—didn’t know what to think.”

Patty nodded. She couldn’t argue with that.

“But I like that,” Jillian said, grinning. “I like coconuts. And even if I didn’t know what to think—sometimes thinking is overrated. I already know how I _feel_.”

She cleared her throat. “I know how I feel about you, Patty. And finding out that you _weren’t_ actually engaged to my brother didn’t change that.”

And then, of course, Jillian winked. “It just made me feel better that I wasn’t going to be causing World War Three in my family by doing this.”

She got down on one knee and Patty felt about ready to pass out right on the subway tile. Then Jillian pulled out a crackerjack box ring—gaudy with a big purple plastic jewel.

Patty raised her eyebrows. “Baby, are you just playin’ with me now?”

“I’m not asking you to marry me. But I am asking if you want to be a little less lonely with me. I want to be with you, Patty. I hope you want to be with me.”

Patty held out her hand without a word, and Jillian slid the ring onto her pinky finger. Then Patty grabbed Jillian’s free hand and pulled the smaller woman onto her feet. “Here’s your answer,” she said, and kissed Jillian.

Butterflies. Fireworks. Soft lips on Patty’s lips. The feeling of Jillian’s compact little body against her own. Warmth like melting caramel inside her. A feeling of completeness, like Patty would never be out in the cold alone, like she would never again have to say, “I don’t have anyone.” Because now—now she had someone to call her own. All the clichés and more came true when Patty kissed her future girlfriend that cold day in January.

Patty’s head was spinning. “Good?” she asked dizzily.

“Good,” Jillian said. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“Hell yeah. I mean—no, I can’t… I have 45 minutes left on this shift…”

“Okay, cool. Can I sit on your lap and make all the announcements on the speaker thingamajiggy?”

Patty laughed. “I’ll allow it.”

As she opened the door to the booth to let Jillian in, she said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’m going to Europe.”

“Cool, I’ll come with you.” Jillian pushed Patty down into her seat, and climbed into her lap as if she’d been doing it for years.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea for a couple just startin’ out, but…”

Jillian turned and fixed Patty in the high beams of her blue eyes. “Okay, we’ll go to your apartment after this and iron out the details.”

“Fine.”

“In bed,” Jillian raised.

“ _Fine_.” Patty liked where this was going. She liked how it felt dangerous and safe at the same time. She liked all of it, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so uncomplicatedly happy.

Jillian beamed wickedly. She pressed the intercom and spoke into it. “Next train to Poundtown, everyone, next train to Poundtown…”

Patty snatched the intercom mic away from her. “Oh no you don’t! This is my job, you little—”

Jillian laughed and laughed, wriggling on Patty’s lap, and turned and kissed Patty until neither of them could think of anything but the taste of each other on their mouths, and in the back of Patty’s blissed-out mind was, _Finally, finally, finally I know exactly what I’ll be doing next Christmas._

_Or should I make that ‘who’?_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this between finals as stress relief after watching the movie for the first time, and it just sort of spiraled from there! I really wanted to have it be ready on Christmas Day, and hoped that this would be the kind of story that someone could curl up with and read for hours.
> 
> When writing fic, I usually refer to Holtzmann by her last name. But since this story portrays a younger version of her, using her first name seemed appropriate. After all, this is baby Holtz, not grown-up Holtz.
> 
> I also sort of like to think of this story as fix-it fic. In the movie, Holtz alludes to a negative relationship with her family. Writing this, I imagined how that could have been changed with Patty's intervention earlier in her life. (Because Patty can fix anything.)
> 
> Blatantly stole the idea of the Holtzmanns being Ukrainian Jewish from a Patty/Holtz story by bobafutch, because I loved it so much. Please go read their excellent story. Finally, happy holidays! :)


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